Tiger porn ‘joke’ is now on police and prosecutors

Tues. 28 Oct. 2014

I presume you’ve heard the news (if not, the links below will reveal all). Forget about lions, I can see it now: the true “king of beasts”, the majestic tiger, prowling the jungle seeking not prey to devour, but a human female to shag. Unless the tiger is gay, of course, in which case he will no doubt be stalking a male of our species. What on earth could be going on?

Well, actually, does this imagery sound ridiculous? Of course it does; yet, apparently, police and crown prosecutors in this country think it’s realistic. Perhaps the poor tiger they apparently thought was shagging a human female in a video clip – really a man in a tiger suit – had been a victim in another way, cruelly fed an unrelenting diet of extreme porn until the confused, nay, undoubtedly psychologically and emotionally scarred-for-life animal had developed a (sexual) appetite for humans. I would expect that would be quite a protracted and expensive process; I would expect, for example, the tiger would have to be de-clawed and de-toothed, lest this real king of beasts inflicted entirely unintentional mortal wounds on his sexual prey during the act of copulation. Tigers would also, I imagine, be expensive to keep... think of the feeding bill. And imagine the difficulty in exercising the animal – perhaps dress the tiger in a dog suit for walks? Tigers are also, unfortunately, extremely rare these days, I believe.

Ah, now I know what the good agents of the law were thinking! It’s a clandestine cabal of perverted zookeepers that’s responsible for this outrage! Producing the original footage, that is, although that doesn’t seem to be as important as slapping the cuffs on people who don’t even know they’ve received such mind-and-moral-damaging visual material as a joke. Wait a minute, some people would actually like someone in uniform slapping cuffs on them... I think that procedure might need to be reviewed as well – can’t be seen providing such pleasures to certain elements of the population, can we, and at Her Majesty’s expense to boot.

So who is the pervert out of all this? I’d say it would be all those tigers roaming around looking for humans to satisfy their unnatural desires. Or perhaps it’s those who like confiscating such imagery – think of the collection they’d have by now! And I should add that I do not necessarily regard “perversion” as a problem, as long as whatever it is that floats someone’s singular boat involves adults of sound mind (even if they are wearing a tiger suit) and is safe, sane and consensual. Alas, too many people apparently see such activities, such attitudes, such a philosophical approach to the wide diversity of human sexuality, as a threat that must be purged from both individual and society.

There is of course an interpretation of this affair (and others) that is open to speculation and concerns my use of “apparently” when it comes to what the police, in particular, thought was going on in the tiger-man video: that is, victimisation. In this case, they’ve probably succeeded even though the case was thrown out of court: an innocent party’s life was ruined. The victim – because, being innocent, that’s what Mr Andrew Holland is – undoubtedly went against expectations by deciding to fight and changing his initial “guilty” plea (on poor legal advice) to “not guilty”. In which case, the damage this ridiculous law is doing – as ridiculous as apparently thinking a man in a tiger suit was a real tiger – is now very clear. It must be scrapped, and that’s why it’s such good news that Mr Holland is now taking his case all the way to the top.

Jane Fae, sexual politics activist extraordinaire (whom I also know personally), puts the whole debacle in the serious political context I’ve mentioned (only the “extreme porn” law didn’t come into effect until early 2009, so it hasn’t been used for 10 years as Jane states, at least not formally): Anti-porn laws allow police to target those they don’t like.

I don’t promote the redtop tabloids, even if they’re cashing in on a joke that’s coming from the right direction, for a change; therefore no links to them, because next time it could be aimed at one of us from the wrong direction (remember the Max Mosley case at the hands of the News of the World, etc?). Thus the Huffington Post is the closest to tabloid territory I like to venture, and the HuffPost does make a good effort at ridiculing our esteemed upholders of the law, even if in this case the particular law in question must share the honours as a typically botched (and politically–ideologically motivated) job by our equally esteemed lawmakers: ‘Tiger sex’ video leads to 6 months bail, a life in ruin and a challenge to extreme porn law.

And finally, you will find a link to the Backlash site on my Links page, where it has been since this website of mine first went live in January 2011. I urge you to visit it.